Friday

10 July 2009

I started my current manuscript in March; unlike my previous work, It's Not About The Cookies*, this one poured out without any wailing or pulling of hair on my part. In three months time it grew from a suggestion of "You should totally do this as a story!" from a friend to a bloated 175,000 words.

That's a lot of words.

Too many, actually. When you figure my first three books weighed in at 111,000-113,000 each...this one is downright obese and needs a little help from my inner Jenny Craig.

I trimmed it down to 150,000 on the first pass, but now that I'd into the slice and dice process, trying to edit as I rewrite, I find I'm adding as many words as I'm excising. Halfway into it, with an incredible amount of wordicide (shut up. That is too a word), I've got it down to...150,000 words.

Typically I don't let anyone see what I'm working on at this stage of the game. It's still a first draft, still raw, and the idea of allowing other eyes to see my literary vomit is just a wee bit uncomfortable. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Char, wife of Murf, the one who was in that horrible accident last week, is on the mend (long, long way to go for sure, but it looks like she'll make a full recovery) and wants to read it. Now, how do you say no to that? "Um, sure, you're laid up in a hospital bed because you damn near DIED and you've had TWO major surgeries AND you need a distraction from your hovering husband...BUT I'm not gonna let you read the manuscript of a storyline YOU suggested."

Yeah, I'm mean but not that mean.

I'll spend the weekend going through the second half of the manuscript, and then I will mentally wet myself as I send an electronic copy, formatted for use with a Kindle...and then hope that she doesn't laugh her stitches loose because it's that bad.

Oh yeah, it's that bad right now. A first draft is first for a reason.

So...I'm off to the evilness otherwise known as "The Gym" for a little bit and then I'm heading to Borders where I will pick at words and try to not add more than I am removing, and I will feel incredibly self conscious about the whole thing knowing that next week someone else will be reading this bloated and convoluted book.

If I really do wet myself please don't point and laugh. Just pass the Depends and tell me what a good little Wabbit I am.

She's re-reading the first three in anticipation and it's giving her something to look forward to--so I appreciate it. If you can't Kindle it I can print a copy for her, but then you risk me reading it, too.

Sidenote, if Craig makes any more comments on my blog just ingore him. Rehab failed him miserably.

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Doctor Who Quotes

There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick.

We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?

Every time you see them happy, you remember how sad they're going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later? And the answer is, of course, because they're going to be sad later.

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.

If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.